Robin Williams once picked his favourite actor to impersonate: “Even oysters have enemies”
He may not have been an impressionist by trade, but Robin Williams was skilled enough at all facets of comedy to be more than capable of performing a pitch-perfect approximation of stars from across the world of stage, screen, and popular culture.
As a comedic tour-de-force, Williams’ unstoppable upward trajectory took him from the stand-up circuit to the summit of Hollywood via a detour into the world of televised sitcoms, with his signature stream-of-consciousness style and riff-heavy improvisations making him one of the biggest stars in the world.
Impressionists only tend to have a finite shelf life, something fellow stand-up-turned-A-lister Jim Carrey discovered when he was trying to carve out his own niche at the beginning of his career, but Williams never lost his ability to mimic the cadence of a famous face, even if it was rarely worked into his most memorable onscreen performances.
To say Williams could embody an eclectic array of personalities would be putting it lightly when his impressions covered everyone and everything from Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, and Rodney Dangerfield to Julia Child, Robert De Niro, Elmer Fudd, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but none of them were his favourites.
Instead, that honour fell to somebody whom Williams had great personal respect for but also a hint of professional jealousy. After all, he famously wanted to play the Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 comic book classic Batman, only for Jack Nicholson to steal the part right under his nose.
However, they clearly let bygones be bygones, with Williams once intervening and accepting an award on Nicholson’s behalf when the latter was far too stoned to deliver a speech of his own. The Academy Award-winning Good Will Hunting star was enthralled by the three-time Oscar winner’s unique persona, which is why there was only one answer when a Reddit AMA tasked him to name his favourite person to impersonate.
“Oh god, Jack Nicholson,” Williams answered. “He once was with me at a benefit and leaned over and said, ‘Even oysters have enemies’. In a very intense voice, I responded with, ‘Increase your dosage’. More fascinated than scared. He says things that even Buddha goes, ‘What did you mean?'”
While it’s entirely true that oysters do, in fact, have a number of natural predators and underwater enemies long before they get scooped out of the ocean and served on a plate, it’s understandable that even an off-kilter comic like Williams was caught off-guard by that David Attenborough-esque assessment being made to him over dinner by one of the greatest actors of all time.
Williams did a bang-on Nicholson impersonation for decades, and his effortless appropriation was undoubtedly helped immeasurably by repeated first-hand exposure to the icon himself.
